


Fall in to the Witching Hour

by The_Streetlamp_Sputtered



Category: Original Work
Genre: Birds, Chronic Illness, Chronic Pain, Depression, Ghosts, Language of Flowers, Memory Loss, Mental Illness, Personal Experience, Poems, Poetry, Supernatural Elements, a lot of these are about things like chronic pain and mental illness, so keep that in mind, vent - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:55:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24735775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Streetlamp_Sputtered/pseuds/The_Streetlamp_Sputtered
Summary: And then came the ninth, the most terrible thing:The angel of night took me under its wingAnd unspun my life’s thread, and cut out the slack,And tied up the rest, so that when I looked backThe holes in my head were dripping and fullWith the Lethe’s dead waters leaving a lullBetween what is known and what is a myth:I forgot how to move and my body went stiff.***A collection of poems written by me in moments of contemplation and reflection on the state of my life. A brief description + trigger warnings will be included in the notes of each chapter
Kudos: 1





	1. Blood Eagle

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warnings:
> 
> descriptions of pain  
> descriptions of memory loss
> 
> ***
> 
> Thinking thoughts about what a complete shitshow my body is

Blood Eagle

First came the ache, then came the pain;

Then came the storm and the heaviest rain

And the fog-bank within,

Which clung fast to my brain,

And the creak of my bones as they bent under strain.

Next came the agony: 

The hot iron rack,

And the unbearable heat of the air on my back,

And the claws in my ribs, which reached under my breast,

And the eagle without which took lungs from my chest.

Third came the shudders, and the shakes in my spine

Which turned under my skin like wet kitchen twine

From the roast I can’t eat, because fourth came the throat,

Which closed and rebelled and felt full when I spoke.

Fifth came the cold, which started within

And stayed through the summer and pushed up through my skin

To put pins in my sides and ice in my head

And phantasmic bugs in the sheets of my bed.

Sixth came the dreams, where none were before:

Dreams of strange skies and unknown ocean floors;

And the unexplored roads of cities gone silent;

And a jar full of sounds and a slow sinking quiet;

Which brought forth the seventh: The ouroboros thoughts

The questioning game between crosses and naughts -

“Give up?” Asked the naughts, and the crosses replied,

“Aren’t you guilty about all the times that you’ve lied?”

Eighth came acceptance, for about a fortnight

And then came the crisis, the self-wrought gaslight

And the horror within - “am I fooling them all?”

But I snapped out of that when the pain had me in thrall.

And then came the ninth, the most terrible thing:

The angel of night took me under its wing

And unspun my life’s thread, and cut out the slack,

And tied up the rest, so that when I looked back

The holes in my head were dripping and full

With the Lethe’s dead waters leaving a lull

Between what is known and what is a myth:

I forgot how to move and my body went stiff.

My memory lane had a path by the Styx

Which I walked down each evening at quarter-to-six

On my way home from nowhere, or nowhere recalled -

Every place in my past had been long overhauled.


	2. Deja-Vu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings:
> 
> weird memory things. not quite memory loss, but related to it.
> 
> ***
> 
> based on a recurring experience I have, usually at the turn of Spring into Summer, when the weather finally starts getting warm enough to leave the front door open.

Deja-vu

Sometimes I sit by my door in late Spring

And almost remember a nearly there thing;

I’ll kneel on the step with the sun on my skin

And come close to finding the things lost within.

“I’ve been here before,” I’ll say on the stone,

And I’ll roughly recall the edge of unknown:

The smell of the roadside on long journeys home,

And the taste of the air while walking on loam

In the forests of my youth, out on the Downs,

And the wide-eyed excitement of then-new towns.

But deeper beneath, on the edge of my thoughts -

The wandering trails which leave me distraught

Where my hindbrain plays tricks on my eyes and my ears:

A dinner party nobody’s been to for years;

And the apartment next door that doesn’t exist;

And the broken down boats that leave with the mist

On damp dockyard mornings, when everything’s strange,

“Trust not your instincts and stay open to change,”

Says the fisherman on the beach

When I ask him for fish that are just out of reach - 

The fish which have memo notes tucked in their scales,

And all my life’s story written out on their tails.

Back on my doorstep, I pause and reflect

On the cause of the feeling of fae disconnect,

And I’ll come back to this: the last time I was here

I thought the same thing the previous year

And the year before that, and each time ahead;

I sat on the step and my comfort dropped dead.


	3. Jury Duty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A musing on guilt

Jury Duty

Guilty as the damned! 

A voice in your head, ephemeral 

With no cadence to use but your own:

It steals your vocal cords, twists them into knots

And once it has silenced you, brings forth your crimes

The evidence laid bare

Scrawled in yellow crayon on papyrus 

Char and mildew warring for ownership.

It is a fraud: you know this

But with your voice, it plays the part

Of a dear friend you hold close to your heart

But it’s a desperate thing, and it forgot its mask

And its true face is twisted 

With the force of its sneer.

Turn to the jury: the slobbering wolves

Condemned!

Is it you they chase, or your stolen voice?


	4. Clockwork

Clockwork

If you cut me, would I bleed?

Or would you simply peel back my skin

And expose my ticking clock -

My inner-workings, my tumble lock

If you find my key, would my heart open?

Or would it shatter where the gears have warped

And fallen from their place

Like tears on my face:

Wooden, left in salt water and sun.

If you cut me, would you cry?

Or, instead, would I?


	5. Haze and Fog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Companion pieces written about withdrawing from society and forgetting how to interact with people, even those who we consider our closest friends.

Haze

You’ve been gone a long time. 

Do you remember my name?

Do you remember my wants, my pleasures, my game?

You’ve been gone since the autumn, when everything changed

Gone since the days went from sun into rain.

You were gone before then, since the autumn before:

Gone when I knocked and you opened the door.

Your house had been haunted, by the thing in your skin

And it left you with doubts and your body rake-thin.

You were back for a while, between the dusk and the dawn - 

You returned with a face which was sketched-on and drawn

You left in the morning, when your equinox was done

I checked under your bed and your shadow was gone.

I wrote to you in winter, through the longest of days

And you wrote back on birch bark, with a pen dipped in haze

You wrote with the ink and the fog in your brain

And the mud in your bones when you were sick of the pain.

You were gone when it snowed, but it snowed in your heart -

Do you know who I am? 

Do you know where you start?

When it was Spring you were there, for all of a week:

You stayed for the showers and the smell of wet peat.

I called your house when the power was out

And you picked up on the third ring with a glorious shout:

“I remember your name!” You said, but when I asked

You thought for ten minutes and then hung up at last.

///

Fog

It’s been a long time.

I’ve been asleep in the break:

I’ve been dreaming of things I could do while awake.

You were there, in my dreams, and your body was yours

But I looked and I found your face and features obscured.

I grasped for the word on the tip of my tongue 

The word that meant “you” and all that you’ve done:

You came to my house, when I was asleep,

And I let you stay when you came by my bedroom to weep

You chased out the cobwebs and dusted the shelves 

And you told off the ghosts raiding my fridge for themselves.

You called the landline when a storm was overhead 

And the lightning woke me up and dragged me from my bed

I tasted the word and for a moment I knew

And I tried to spit it out when you asked if I do -

But I swallowed instead, and it slid down my throat,

So I hung up the phone and I put on my coat

And I wandered outside, to the stream in the woods

And I coughed up your name to the babbling brook 

But it babbled back with a sound which wasn’t all there,

So I packed up and left and avoided your stare.


	6. Forget-Me-Not

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a mostly atmospheric piece written to reflect my mood

Forget-me-not

You watch the shadow from the corner of your eye

And wait while it lags in its place far behind

It follows at your pace

Copies the shape of your face

And gains ground with the setting of the sun.

No urge left to run -

No fear of the haunting ghost

Which dogs your steps and plays the host

To all your forgotten dreams,

Which it hides in the slipstreams

Between the shadow and the caster

And the reluctant puppet master

It knows

Where every flower grows

In your mind’s eye

With which you spy:

See yourself, reveal yourself

Know from which paths to remove yourself

Buckle under the weight of your smile

With your shadow, all the while,

Laughing at your inside jokes

About venetian masks and gentlefolks

And roses given in pink and blue:

Those imperfect and graceless hues

With their company of forget-me-nots

Given gladly and left to rot.


	7. Day-to-Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> what it says on the tin - my everyday life.
> 
> trigger warnings:
> 
> chronic illness/pain

Day-to-Day

It’s tiring to think with the thorn in my side;

It’s the way that it sticks and keeps the wound wide

It’s the trip in my step, it’s the hitch in my breath

It’s the way that my dreams all lead back to death

It’s the twitch of my limbs without my control

It’s the place where my heart was replaced with a hole

It’s the beast in my throat that holds hostage my words

It’s the press of my lungs to my ribs like caged birds

It’s the twist of the knife and the turn of the hook

It’s the failure of every trick in the book

It’s the betrayal and the fear, and their forces combined

It’s the wandering body and the wandering mind

It’s the cruel machinations of traitorous nerves

It’s the difference between what I need and deserve 

It’s the fly-away hair and the waste-away muscle

It’s the wobbling skip and the lethargic bustle

It’s the way my reports of pain are rehearsed 

And the way that I know that I’m not at my worst.


	8. Gossip

Gossip

They sit upon their garden path

When the Winter turns to Spring

They wear a necklace made of garden wire

And a copper snail-tape ring

They lean in close to honey bees

And listen as the speak

Of the whispering upon the breeze

And the raven’s loosened beak

They wander past their old back gate

And down towards the shore

Where the seagulls cast away their hate

And come back crying out for more

They hold a flask of honeyed tea

With which they coat their words

And wait for when their tongue comes free

To whisper with the other birds


End file.
